Reconsidering Explanation: Lessons from Nanosynthesis

Abstract

Nanosynthesis forces a reevaluation of received views on scientific explanation. I discuss the synthesis of anisotropic metal nanoparticles, a typical nanosynthesis research program, in order to demonstrate the failure of standard philosophical accounts of explanation to capture the dynamics of information exchange in synthetic sciences. I argue that using the language of effective heuristics, coupled with attention to changes in the meanings of concepts across different length scales, is a more promising means of capturing how information is obtained from the study of nanosynthesis systems.

This text is the script of the talk presented at the 2012 PSA meeting. As such, it contains no formal bibliography and occasionally refers to figures or slides. References and slides are available upon request.